The Trail Blazers had a healthy dose (lengthwise) of practice on Monday, running about 30 minutes longer than most days, but certainly were not the healthiest group.

As Jason Quick has in his Blazers notebook, neither Joel Przybilla (back spasms) or Greg Oden (adductor bruise) took part in practice and both are listed as day to day. Jerryd Bayless also sat out with a sprained ankle and Nate McMillan said Rudy Fernandez (back spasms) is "getting better."

LaMarcus Aldridge, however, did participate in the entire practice Monday. Aldridge said his knee, which kept him out of Sunday's game, felt better Monday.

• Overall the team seemed pretty pleased with the effort and result in Sunday night's win over division rival Denver. Last week McMillan talked about needing to see improvement from his team, game-to-game and practice-to-practice. After a pair of gritty games from Portland, McMillan says he's seen that improvement (watch below).

With the regular season just a week away, two questions that remain revolve around the starting five and how deep McMillan's rotation will go. As he has said all training camp, McMillan stuck to his guns that the players will determine who plays.

"I'm not committed to any number. I want to try and use a [set] number of players but to play 10 guys ... we can if they allow me to. What I mean by that, you gotta be out there and be productive. We won't be doing it just to be an experiment."

While the Blazers coach has been pretty clear he'd like to keep his playing rotation around 10 or less, McMillan was pretty noncommittal when answering questions about what his starting five will be come October 27th.

"We got time ... I think the guys pretty much know," McMillan responded with a smile to the four-thousandth question about the starting five.

• Greg Oden, one of the potential members of that starting five, enjoyed another notable preseason game (16 points, 7 rebounds, 2 blocks), albeit in limited action (16 minutes) due to foul trouble. And both McMillan and Brandon Roy have been encouraged with Oden's preseason performance (watch below).